The End
by The Infamous Wootermelon
Summary: It’s the moment of truth. Everything relies on the outcome of this final battle. If they had breath to spare, everybody would be holding it, crossing their fingers and hoping that the side they bet on wins… HBP spoilers
1. Chapter 1

_**The End**_

_**Chapter One**_

_Disclaimer:_ I own the plot and original concepts, characters, et cetera. Everything else belongs to its respective creator(s).

_The Author:_ Some of the events in the chapters overlap, and they're in different perspectives. Chapter one is objective, chapter two is in first person, chapter three is in omniscient, and chapter four is in limited omniscient. That's to clear up any confusion.

The battlefield flashed with lights and sounds, illuminating the mass of bodies piled up on the ground. Cho Chang sweated as she fended off a troll with a well-placed fireball, her grip on her wand's hilt slippery at best, the ends of her long black ponytail plastered against her neck by various fluids. She heard Hannah Abbott scream shrilly as she stumbled in a pool of blood and whipped around to see if she could help the younger girl. The troll took the opportunity to aim a blow at the Chinese girl's head with his heavy, iron-spiked cudgel, and bloody gray matter sprayed all over the brute's feet, making the leathery gray soles slick with fresh gore. The troll looked for a new victim to dispatch, his face contorted with bestial delight, eerie in the silvery light of a passing Patronus.

Roger Davies grimaced as the troll landed a glancing blow on the fleshy part of his well-muscled upper arm, one of the sharp iron spikes grazing his skin and making a furrow that seeped with blood, before attacking back with a sharply articulated Killing Curse. The startling flash of vivid green light blinded him for a minute so he stumbled backward and tripped over Cho Chang's body, landing hard on his back. A dementor swooped down onto him, its ghastly mouth opened wide in preparation to suck out his soul.

A cold sweat glinted on his brow from the dementor's effects, but a determined expression registered on his face as he yelled "_Expecto patronum_!" with all the air that he could expel from his lungs. A grizzly bear erupted from the tip of his wand and chased off the dementor, lunging for it. Roger got up quickly and engaged in another duel, this time with a wizard who was as thin as a reed with his Death Eater's mask burned onto his face. The Death Eater's face was mutilated beyond repair, a mass of raw and oozing skin, and one of his eyes had been blistered shut. Roger was disarmed in the ensuing duel, his wand two feet away from his hand. He writhed in torment as the Death Eater sadistically cursed him, saying "_Crucio_" with a mad, fevered excitement.

Professor Flitwick squeaked a nasty charm that had the distracted Death Eater kneeling on the body-littered ground before killing him with ruthless efficiency. He was picking off the surging mass of Voldemort's army from a distance, his curses striking their target with sniper-like accuracy, carefully avoiding his own allies. Roger gave a curt nod of thanks and acknowledgement before going off to square off his next opponent.


	2. Chapter 2

_**The End**_

_**Chapter Two**_

The battle played out like a macabre drama on a stage littered with gore and bodies. My heart pitter-pattered inside of my chest. I felt a panicky need to make myself a smaller target, one less likely to get hit and more likely to survive the battle, no matter the outcome.

Sneakily, I transformed into a rat, squeezing into my magical disguise like a wet, slippery bar of soap. I gritted my teeth against the lightheaded, dizzy feeling from the sudden shrinking of my organs and the reshaping and resizing of the bones of my skeleton, pausing for a scant few seconds. I scurried towards some chubby blonde girl and scrabbled to find purchase as I climbed up her ankle, biting into the soft flesh of her calf. She gave a bloodcurdling scream and stumbled even before I'd dug my teeth into her, spooked like a high-strung horse from the scratching of my claws, and fell, impaling herself on the rib of a rotting corpse, one of the Dark Lord's army that had become a casualty of war, dying another death. I scampered up her writhing body and found the soft beat of her jugular, on the side of her white, revealed neck, and gnawed deeply.

Another girl, fighting a troll, whipped around, long black hair swinging, out of instinct and gave her opponent an opening. She fell, her head smashed into bits. Some of her brain splattered onto me, and I shook off the gore staining my coat.

The troll lumbered off, and I went further from the chaotic fray, staying near the edges. A spell whizzed by and singed my fur; the reek of burnt hair made me gag, but I stumbled on, toward that girl, that Hermione Granger, who was dueling with a masked Death Eater. Bellatrix, I realized, from the mad laughter even as the younger girl gained the advantage. I hurried away from Granger. She was too clever, and I was growing even more frightened as the battle wore on slowly, as if time took pleasure in dragging its feet and watching the spectacle. The snail's pace made the hair along my spine stand on end, like teeth scraping lightly against smooth, cold stainless steel.

I knew I was no match for her, and I wandered aimlessly, until I came to the hub of the battle.

There were blinding flashes of light and spells being screamed, voices growing hoarse and wands flicking. The whole battle revolved around this, and I could almost hear and feel the cogs and gears turning. The whole importance of the universe was compressed into a black hole, gravity and gravity and gravity, and everything was drawn into this.

This was the center.

I watched an inhuman man – man? – I'd created. Was I his parent? I wouldn't dare suggest it to the inhuman, a torn soul, who thought he was god. He'd deluded himself into thinking he was eternal, forever, and parentless, immortal. He would kill me if I'd made a claim to his paternity, and he was pain and terror and threats and horror; but he was also power and strength. So I'd done what I'd done and helped give the Dark Lord his own form again.

He dueled with the Chosen One, Harry Potter. He'd been merciful once, but now hard lines creased his face. He was still young, I remembered, but he'd never been young. Heroes were always youthful and never young.

It was a flurry of lights and sounds, spells and counter spells.

Then a hoarse voice yelled, "_Aveda Kedevra_!"

There was a flash of green light, and everything was over, to an indeterminate end for me, because Hagrid fell, and he fell on top of a rat.


	3. Chapter 3

_**The End**_

_**Chapter Three**_

Harsh pants ripped themselves from Harry's raw, parched throat, scraping out any remaining moisture from the tissue, and his fingers were clenched around the hilt of his wand so tightly that a splinter of holly wood dug itself into the ridge of callused skin at the top of his palm. He deflected a curse that Voldemort threw at him and sidestepped another one gracefully. It was like a solo in a ballet, brutally elegant, the hexes ricocheting like arrows bouncing off of medieval shields. He hardly dared to inhale or exhale precious breaths for fear of them distracting him, leaving an opening for Voldemort to get a spell in edgewise that was too quick for him to deflect.

Harry dodged a spell like a bullet, feeling the warmth graze his side but leaving no effect. He sent a nasty jinx towards Voldemort, a man more than half destroyed, only one seventh of his mutilated soul still existing. Sometimes he found it surprising that Voldemort even had a soul, had had one to begin with. Wouldn't it make sense that the only people who wanted to destroy their soul had none to begin with?

He wiped his mind blank of any thought and focused on the duel between him and his enemy. It was tunnel-vision, and now he could only rely on his instincts and whatever intelligence his mind had supplied them with.

Voldemort glared at Harry, a cut on his cheek oozing blood. The Dark Lord didn't raise a hand to dash away the blood, even though he was tempted to. To do so might mean the end of him, because he knew in his bones that this was the deciding battle.

Someone – a female someone with a high-pitched voice, Voldemort noted absently – shrieked bloodcurdlingly, and both of them fought the impulse to check who it was.

He silently thought of a three-headed snake, a Runespoor. He, Dumbledore, and this scarred boy were the heads, leading the body into a new era, a revolution determined by the end. He'd gotten rid of that fool, Dumbledore, dispatched him neatly through Snape – that traitor – and now it was up to him to get rid of this last obstacle to solo power. The last head of the Runespoor, and he'd bite it off, feel the life in his blood overflowing his mouth in a coppery surge.

Peter Pettigrew, in his rat form, watched as the two expertly dueled. Then one of them slipped, and one of them yelled the Killing Curse in a hoarse, ringing tone.

Then the rat's life was tamped out like a cigarette as Hagrid's body fell on him heavily, crushing his bones into pieces.


	4. Chapter 4

_**The End**_

_**Chapter Four**_

Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, in her pristine cot in the hospital wing of Hogwarts, dipped her quill into the bottle of emerald ink and continued making lists of casualties and those who were missing in action.

So many dead, she thought sadly. No longer would Hagrid's bluff, huge presence warm the scholarly air of Hogwarts. No longer would Oliver Wood enliven the Quidditch pitches with his manic energy, which at first was amusing, second took a lot of patience to tolerate, and third was contagious. George Weasley had left behind a legacy of two children and a large, grieving family, his quirky enterprise left to his wounded twin.

McGonagall felt a surge of hatred towards Voldemort. So many lives, so many lives… Was it worth it?

She paused when she got to the _P_'s. The nib of her feather quill, a plume that'd been shaved until the very end, where a sparse arrowhead of long, stiff fibers crowned the no-nonsense pen, stopped scratching against the rough parchment. Parkinson, and Perks, and Poinsettia, and finally…

She smiled grimly and continued, with a glance towards the next bed over, where an exhausted Harry Potter recuperated. He'd been physically and emotionally and mentally depleted after the final battle, his last act of heroism before he pursued a normal life. She felt pity and empathy for the poor boy, who'd known more than his fair share of tragedy in the first two decades of his life than most people knew in their entire lifetimes. Maybe he'd settle down to a simple life with his beloved Ginny Weasley, raise a passel of kids, and heal from his traumas and scars, coddled by his wife and given doses of the best medicine there was, a nice heaping portion of love.

Maybe whether or not the destruction of lives – and it was, indeed, an utter and wanton destruction of everything held dear – was worth it, maybe it was subjective.

If so, it was subject to her own opinion, and personally, and professionally, the new Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry thought so.

After all, after every winter, there was spring. After every end, there was another beginning.


End file.
